After dinner, members of the family prepared for the rest of the evening.
"Do you boys have any homework to complete before school tomorrow?" Mom asked as she put away leftovers in the fridge and tidied the kitchen.
"No," Kevin said. "It's all done. I wanted to go upstairs to keep working on this research project with Jared."
His brother smiled at him. "I'm not sure that project is all that important now," he told Kevin.
"Project?" Mom said. "That sounds very official. What sort of project do you two have going?"
"Kevin agreed to help me look for tips on improving my game with aerodynamic principles," the impostor said smoothly. "Coach says all the colleges are using the stuff to get an edge."
Kevin thought his older brother had invented a good save, but he wondered why Jared's urgency about getting information on Wepwawet had lessened.
"Are you sure?" Kevin asked. "I had found some interesting information about..."
"Well, I guess I might as well take a look at what you found," the impostor said.
"Well, that sounds good, but one of you boys needs to walk the dog," Mom said.
"I can walk Shaggy," Dad interjected from the living room.
"Oh, I don't mind, Dad," the impostor quickly volunteered.
Dad walked into the kitchen, a huge grin on his face. "Did I hear right? You're volunteering to walk the dog?" Dad said.
"All right, who are you and what have you done with the real Jared?"
The impostor felt a floundering moment of panic. How had his guise been so easily exposed?
Dad continued to laugh, revealing his earlier comments had been in jest. "I appreciate it, Jared, but I could use a walk myself after that big meal," he said.
"I don't mind..." the impostor tried again.
"No, I'll do it," Dad said. "You keep studying on aerodynamics and improving your game. It would be great if you could land a baseball scholarship to college."
Dad walked to the hook on the wall and removed Shaggy's leash. He also grabbed a plastic glove from the box Mom kept on the counter, and a plastic baggie, before he walked out the back door.
At the moment, a prone Jared rested in the dirt in front of the doghouse, looking like a large, shaggy mound. He had put his time to use, knowing that someone would come to walk him, only to find himself thwarted once again. Despite his dad having tossed the stick from their earlier game of fetch beyond his reach, Jared had managed to find another stick in a yard with a conspicuous absent of potential writing implements.
The instant he took the stick into his jaws and touched the tip to the ground to form the word "help" in the dirt, Jared felt the letter "H" slip out of his brain. Each time he tried to scrawl a letter, it slipped away like fog before bright sunbeams. He could form certain words in his brain, but when he tried to break them apart into individual letters, he felt the threads of his thoughts unravel. His vocabulary and alphabet melted like snowflakes as he struggled to scribble a legible message in the dirt. The associations, the context, the very essence of each letter faded as his intelligence took another downhill slide. After a half hour of futile struggle, he gave up and collapsed in a depressed heap in the dirt.
What would happen now? He couldn't speak to any member of his family. The only ones who had any idea what had happened to him were the impostor and the creepy Egyptian god Wepwawet, and they were hardly likely to assist Jared in his quest to regain his humanity. Hell, it had now become a struggle just to hang on to the last strands of his humanity.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts he failed to notice Dad's arrival until he loomed right in front of him. "Time for your walk, Shaggy," Dad said, bending to unfasten Jared's collar from the lead and reattaching the collar to the leash.
Jared whimpered, trying to get an look at his father not obscured by the shaggy fur that fell over his eyes. "Dad, it's me. I'm Jared. You have to help me!"
Of course, his desperate plea came out as a fit of canine barks and woofs.
"Yea, take it easy," Dad said.
Jared became a nervous bundle of energy as he waited for his dad to open the gate. He saw the plastic glove and baggie peeking from the hip pocket of his dad's trousers, instantly recognizing that this walk wasn't simply for their exercise.
"Sit, boy," Dad said impatiently.
Jared's dad, as a member of the local business community, definitely ranked as an alpha male, something that Jared's canine instincts recognized and responded to with a need to express subservient behavior. He sat, as bidden, and waited for the gate to open. Once dad walked through the gate and invited him to follow, Jared leaped onto his paws again and took the lead as they started their amble on the city sidewalk.
Although Jared knew he should try to keep finding a way to get his father to recognize him, he found a dazzling array of scents overwhelmed his already taxed brain. Every shrub, every hydrant, held messages that he could detect and decipher using his sensitive nostrils. He could recognize that other dogs had visited ahead of him. He could even tell if the dog that left the message had been male or female. Messages left by certain male dogs triggered a curious aggressive response, causing him to produce a low growl. Messages from female dogs made him feel funny and produced an abundance of energy like he had felt while watching the red frisbee during the fateful walk when everything had changed.
"Come on, boy," Dad urged with a tug at the leash. Jared walked to a bench and then ambled over to a USPS Mailbox. The lingering scents associated with the mailbox revealed it had been a popular mingling place for a number of other dogs. As he sniffed at the base of the metal mailbox, he began to feel a gradual increase in pressure on his lower intestinal tract.
At the moment, the various warring scents held his interest. He would have kept sniffing if Dad hadn't given another sharp tug. "Time to do your business, boy," he said.
Something about the tone of Dad's authoritative delivery must have done the trick. Jared shambled to a grassy spot between the bench and the mailbox. A moment later, using the glove and baggie he had brought with them for just that purpose, his father collected the "business" in the baggie and then dropped it and the disposable glove into a nearby public trash can.
Jared felt a war of emotions as he realized that, short of a miracle, he would get walked every day for the rest of his life by some member of his family who would always bring along one plastic baggie and a single disposable glove. He got so overwhelmed by the thought he wasn't watching where he was going until he bumped nose to nose with a plump, vivacious chow being led on a leash by a man instantly recognized by his dad.
"Thomason!" Dad exclaimed. "How have you been?"
George Thomason, one of their neighbors, shook hands with his father as Jared continued to process the other dog standing nose to nose with him.
"Just taking Mitzi for a walk," Thomason said. "How have you been, Bill?"
"The wife and I just got back from a short trip to visit my folks in Maine," Jared's father said.
The chow Mitzi twisted on her leash and ducked behind Jared. He felt her nose sniffing near his butt.
At almost that same instant, he got a powerful whiff of the scent Mitzi was giving off. The intensity nearly short-circuited his mental hardware. The funny feeling returned as he realized, without a doubt, as if the name Mitzi hadn't given it away, that George Thomason's dog was a female.
Mitzi kept sniffing his butt, and Jared felt the urge to return the favor. Despite the presence of his father and their neighbor, Jared moved his bulky, furry form into position to sniff at Mitzi's butt. The aroma hit him like a physical slap and he whined in his throat.
Jared's dad and Mitzi's owner kept talking, not paying much attention to their respective dogs.
Jared found himself a passenger in Shaggy's body as the canine brain seized control of the situation. With Mitzi offering no resistance, Jared tried to climb atop her sturdy, furry body.
George Thomason chuckled and tugged on Mitzi's leash. "Looks like our dogs have hit it off," he told Jared's dad, who looked and saw Shaggy trying to hump the slightly smaller chow.
Before Jared could do much more than get his forepaws on either side of Mitzi's furry form, Dad tugged on the leash and pulled Jared back. "Shaggy," Dad said in a stern, disapproving voice. "Bad boy!"
Jared felt crushed by his father's criticism, but he wanted to get back to Mitzi. "Sorry about that, Bill," Dad said.
Bill chided Mitzi. "Bad girl!" Bill said, but he laughed. "What you going to do?"
Dad agreed. "I guess boys will be boys," he said as Jared tried to regain a position to mount the chow again only for his father to rein in his effort.
"No harm done," Bill replied.
Jared's father agreed, but admitted that Jared's mother kept nagging him to take Shaggy to the vet to get him fixed. "If he's going to be the neighborhood horndog, I may have to do it."
Jared found his grasp on the conversation between his dad and Mr. Thomason weakening as their words no longer held the same interest as scents and odors.
"I hear there are health benefits to getting them fixed," Bill said.
His dad laughed. "I guess, but would you want it done to you?"
Both men enjoyed a good laugh at Dad's wry humor. Jared cocked his head, listened to their laughter, and dimly wondered what had prompted it.
"Those would be some fuzzy puppies if that sheepdog of yours and Mitzi ever got together," Bill said. "I swear she's half fur. Always having to take her to the groomer."
Both men took control of the leashes and proceeded on their way, moving in opposite directions. Jared looked back, hoping Mitzi would return his glance.
Come on, boy," Dad said. "Forget your girlfriend. Time to get home."
Mitzi's scent lingered, keeping Jared distracted for the duration of the walk back home. He hardly noticed as Dad unfastened the leash and attached his collar to the lead.
"Night, boy," Dad said. "And don't you get any ideas of going looking for your little girlfriend."
Just to be sure, Dad reached down and tested the metal stake driven deep into the ground to anchor the lead. With a satisfied grunt, he turned and walked back toward the house.
Jared felt raw as he paced in front of the doghouse. The scent of Mitzi wouldn't leave his nostrils and began to produce some reactions from Shaggy's body as a red tip emerged from the fur-covered sheath along Jared's belly. After a few tight circles, he lodged his shaggy form inside the doghouse. Still more a passenger as Shaggy's doggie instincts remained in control, Jared felt his neck crane to move his muzzle closer to his belly. He licked at his balls and the tip of his dick.
A fierce sensation overcame him and he howled a long, throaty howl.
Inside the house, Kevin looked up from the laptop. "What's wrong with Shaggy?"
The impostor had recognized the emotions fueling the anguished howl. He had felt them on many a night after a stroll through the neighborhood. He smiled to reassure Kevin. "He'll be fine."
Sure enough, they heard no more from Shaggy and Kevin dropped his head over Jared's laptop to continue his research.
In the back yard, a horny Jared continued to lick at his balls and dick as he recalled the encounter with Mitzi. He finally found that the shabby cushion that his mom had provided as a bed for Shaggy also doubled as a great masturbatory tool. Humping the cushion, Jared finally gained some relief and slept without tormenting the entire neighborhood with more howls.